The Getty vocabularies are constructed to allow their use in linked data. A project to publish AAT, TGN, ULAN, and CONA to the LOD (Linked Open Data) cloud is underway. The documents on this page contain news and presentations about releasing the Getty vocabularies as LOD. These materials are subject to frequent modification and addition.

Ontology update: Note that the ontology has changed. Click on the "Developers and programmers..." link above for details.

Additional releases: Plans are in place to release the other vocabularies as LOD on the following dates: ULAN in April 2015 and the CONA demo in late 2015.

Other formats: In addition to LOD, we plan to continue providing the data in relational tables and XML releases. If any format is discontinued in the future, users will be given advance notice.

Working with the community: We have established an open community and we welcome collaboration. Previously we were getting feedback at an email address, but now the preferred way of communicating technical questions, comments, and usage stories is to use the SemanticWeb.com Q&A forum. We will be monitoring this forum regularly. The tags to use are: Getty, AAT, TGN, ULAN, CONA. The following links will pre-populate with the appropriate tags:

Other vocabularies: Until the other vocabularies are available in LOD format, as requested by several in the community, we have implemented a redirect to the HTML version of the full record. Here are examples in each vocabulary:

A current trend in managing art information is to increasingly make data about art, architecture, and cultural heritage objects available as Linked Open Data (LOD). This applies to the information directly describing the objects, but also to the vocabularies used in the description.

When data is linked and open, it means that data is structured and published according to the principles of Linked Data, so that it can be both interlinked and made openly accessible and shareable on the Semantic Web. The goal of linked open data is to allow data from different resources to be interconnected and queried, thus making it more useful. Although the idea of linking data in an open way is not new, the widespread practice of doing so is relatively new, thus the protocols, standards, and licensing options used for linked open data are still evolving.

In order for data to be understood and processed automatically by computers, data in records or about resources must be expressed in a standard format. Each thing (for example, a museum object, a place, or a person) must be represented by a persistent identifier (known as a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI)). A Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a language or format for describing things as well as the relationships between things in terms of simple properties and values (known as 'triples'), while things are represented using URIs. Among the most often-used formats for publishing art vocabularies are the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) and Web Ontology Language (OWL).

If data is to be open to the community for linking and discovery, traditional licensing and copyright practices for art information, images, and associated vocabularies must be adjusted. Data is considered open if the community is free to use, reuse, and redistribute the data, subject either to no restriction or to only the requirements of attribution or share-alike. Among the licenses most often applied to art information are Creative Commons and Open Data Commons licenses, each of which offers a range of levels of openness.

The Art & Architecture Thesaurus® (AAT), the Union List of Artist Names® (ULAN), the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names® (TGN), and the Cultural Objects Name Authority® (CONA) are copyrighted by the J. Paul Getty Trust.

Revised 10 November 2014

Image caption: The Getty Vocabularies as LOD will allow linking and discovery of artworks, architecture, people, places, styles, techniques, materials, and other information related to cultural heritage. Clockwise from top left, images are from the following collections: 2012.R.17, 2003.R.22, 2679-146, 2003.R.22, 96.R.19